Italia Belissimo

It is with a certain amount of sadness that I write this week's column; not so much sadness as regret as I've been asked to have a quick look at Italian food, as they won the World Cup and upset the French, especially the imported Golden boot Zidane.

Oh! How I wish I was writing about roast beef and Yorkshire puddings and traditional fish and chips. Still enough of the lamenting and on with the topic!
Italy has some of the most glorious ingredients known to modern man and the Italians have had so much influence throughout the years from marauding hordes of invading armies that there is a beautiful conglomeration of flavours all wrapped up with oil and sun dried tomatoes. Italian cuisine is extremely varied: the country of Italy was only unified in 1861, and its cuisines reflect the cultural variety of its regions and its diverse history. Italian cuisine is regarded as a prime example of the Mediterranean diet, and is imitated all over the world.
To a certain extent there is really no such thing as Italian cuisine in the way that we understand national cuisines to be. Each area has its own proud specialities, primarily at regional level, but also even at provincial level.
Roman cuisine, for example, uses a lot of pecorino (sheep's cheese) and offal (frattaglie), while Tuscan cooking features white beans, meat, and unsalted bread; the pizzas of Rome are thin as crackers, while Neapolitan and Sicilian pizza is thicker. Northern Italian dishes tend to be somewhat influenced by French and German cuisines. Piemonte and Lombardia each grow their own different kind of rice, which are used to make risotto. The North of Italy is the home of polenta. Emilia-Romagna is known for lasagna and tortellini (stuffed pasta), mortadella, prosciutto, and parmigiano. Naples (Napoli) is the home of pizza, mozzarella and pastries (babà, sfogliatelle). Calabria's cuisine uses a lot of hot pepper for its distinctive salumi. Sicily is the home of ice cream but its cuisine also has many influences from Arab cuisine too (lemon, pistachio) and also includes fish (tuna, swordfish). Sardinia is famous for lamb and pecorino.
As a general rule, northern and southern Italian cuisines are differentiated primarily by the cooking fat and style of pasta commonly used. Northern Italian cuisine apart from on the coast favours butter, cream, Mascarpone cheese, risotto and fresh egg pasta, while Southern Italian cuisine tends toward Mozzarella cheese, olive oil and dried pasta. Southern Italian cuisine tends to make greater use of the ubiquitous tomato, and it is often hard to credit that it has been around for a comparatively short period.
In Bahrain we have an abundance of good Italian eateries and although I can't be seen to favour one over another there are a couple that stand out in my opinion for their effort in using real Italian ingredients and not playing around with the food too much.